The Warning Read online

  Sarah Roberts.

  He’d tried to keep tabs on her over the years since her kidnapping but she was too elusive. He interviewed her parents, her few friends and even tried to talk to her directly, but she avoided cops. He couldn’t blame her after what happened four years ago.

  Sarah had popped up many times since then. There was never any proof of intent with her. She would show up on crime scenes. She would avert a killing and once she even walked ten people out of a burning building, unscathed.

  Parkman was there that night. It was an old five-story printing company building. They’d gone bankrupt in the early 90’s. The building’s main floor was being used for the weekly meetings of a writing group. They’d planned a Halloween get-together. All the members were supposed to walk through the abandoned floors above while people already in place were going to scare the ink out of them. While that was going on the president of the writer’s group started a small fire to act out a pyromania skit from his new short story. The fire spread fast and by the time smoke reached the fifth floor, the twenty people up there could only get down to the third.

  Sarah had been waiting on the third floor according to the writers. She had a pick axe and chopped away at an old boarded up window. A folding ladder she had brought with her was secured and everyone climbed out with five minutes to spare before parts of the ladder got consumed by fire.

  The cops had picked her up after that. They wanted to know how she got in and why she knew to bring the axe and the ladder. His fellow officers interviewed her, drilled questions into her somber face, but got nowhere with her. She’d committed no crime, so they had to let her go. She told them that - if she were gifted - she’d hardly have allowed herself to be kidnapped, beaten and almost killed all those years ago. Come on, think about it, was all she would say.

  Parkman’s work suffered because of Sarah. Two years ago he worried that his obsession with her would cost him his job. After repeated warnings about his conduct regarding the Roberts family, Parkman capitulated.

  Yet now, her name had resurfaced, this time in a more serious way. An anonymous tip said that Sarah shot the guy found in Jack Tate’s house. The knife used to kill the guy was Jack’s kitchen knife and Jack was here at the police station earlier. He was actually in police custody not an hour before all this went down. He’d supposedly found a dead body buried a ten-minute walk from his front door. And then the ripped shirt tie-in.

  Something was going on here. Something was seriously fucked up. Parkman believed it had everything to do with Sarah, just not criminally. If she shot the guy, there had to be a reason. If he knew anything about Sarah, he knew she was no criminal. In his mind she was a superhero. But that wasn’t the sentiment his colleagues used. No, their words were harsher, cruder. Some of them wanted to bring her down, like she set accidents up just to save people. He even overheard others whisper occult stuff, like she’s possessed because she knows the future.

  Whatever they believed, Parkman was her only friend. This meant he needed to locate her before anyone else.

  With this shooting on record, she could go down hard.

  He grabbed the rest of his coffee, drank it down, tossed the cup in the trash and headed for his car popping a fresh toothpick into his mouth.

  It was 6:00am and it was time to find Sarah Roberts and Jack Tate. He knew just the person to talk to.

  Dolan Ryan.

  Chapter 9

  “Come in, come in,” Dolan squinted in the morning sun as he opened the door. “You must be Jack Tate?”

  Jack looked at him sideways. “How do you know my name?”

  “He’s psychic,” Sarah said.

  “I saw it on the news.” Dolan looked at Sarah. “Both your names.”

  They moved out of the foyer and into Dolan’s kitchen.

  “Coffee anyone?” he asked.

  Jack and Sarah shook their heads. Dolan leaned against the counter and waited as the two of them sat at his kitchen table. He saw that Sarah was remaining alert around Jack. There was a bump in her shirt at the pant line where a gun was hidden. He could tell that this time Sarah wasn’t taking any chances. She looked ready to spring like a predatory cat.

  Sarah started talking first, telling Dolan everything that had happened in the last twelve hours, from her premonition and Jack finding the girl’s body until they arrived at Dolan’s.

  Dolan looked at Jack. “You don’t know who those guys were?”

  Jack shook his head. “I’ve got a lot of enemies from a few decades ago. I’m in my mid-sixties now, retired for a long time on a disability pension. If it was from my past they might as well give up. I’ll die of natural causes soon enough.”

  Dolan looked at Sarah without acknowledging the attempt at humor. Something was happening to her. “Are you okay?”

  He watched as Sarah grabbed a notebook from her back pocket and slipped off the chair. She hit the floor as if she was syrup poured from a bowl. Her eyes rotated back in her head. She gripped a pen so tight in her hand, Dolan thought she might snap it in two.

  From the angle Dolan had he couldn’t see what she was writing. He looked at Jack who was sitting back, an expression of surprise on his face as if he was watching the dead rise from a grave.

  Sarah gasped and came to. She looked around and then used the chair to get herself off the floor.

  “What does it say?” Dolan asked, moving closer.

  Sarah looked at what she had written, then back up at Dolan. “It says run out the front door…they’re in the back.”

  “Then let’s go!” Dolan said.

  He had to grab Jack’s arm to get him up.

  Dolan got to the front door and peeked outside. The morning sun bounced off parked cars and glinted in windows but he saw no movement. At the same time he gripped the door handle they all heard the soft sound of glass breaking somewhere in the back of the house. He ripped the door open and all three of them tumbled onto Dolan’s front porch and right into Officer Parkman.

  “Whoa,” Parkman said. Dolan saw him flip a toothpick to the other side of his mouth and then ask, “Where are you three going so fast?”

  “Someone is breaking into my house. They’re in the back. They just broke a window. They’re probably armed and dangerous.”

  Parkman flipped open his holster. With his voice lowered, he said, “Okay, now quietly run across the lawn and get into my cruiser. Wait for me there.”

  Dolan nodded and started away, staying ahead of Jack and Sarah who followed close. He looked back and saw the cop talking into a cell phone. Parkman dropped his phone in a pocket, lowered into a crouch and jumped in through Dolan’s front door. Dolan remembered Parkman from a couple years ago. He’d been harassing him about Sarah, always trying to discuss her.

  They made it to the police car and then ran past it.

  “Aren’t we supposed to wait inside?” Jack asked.

  “You go inside that cop car, you’ll die,” Dolan said.

  Sarah nodded, “I’d listen to him.”

  The trio hustled across the street and behind a black van. From this vantage point they could watch the front of Dolan’s house without being seen.

  He heard gunfire. It always surprised him how much it sounded like firecrackers. He looked at the houses immediately in front of them. No movement. Everything was still and quiet. He looked back to his house. The officer had reappeared. He was hunched down at the end of the porch behind a lounge chair. Sirens sounded in the distance.

  “What do we do now?” Sarah asked. “This is out of control. We don’t even know who these people are or how they knew we’d be here.”

  Dolan looked over his shoulder at her. “I think you’re going to have to succumb to trusting the police on this one. It may be too big.”

  Sarah stared at him. She shook her head in the negative. “No way. Never.”

  “You should think about it.”

  “Just did.”

  “Look, you can’t help anybody if you’re dead.”
r />   “I won’t be dead. Vivian would not lead me to my own death.”

  “You don’t know that. What if she gets selfish and decides to have you join her? You almost died four years ago. It was only luck that you lived. It had nothing to do with Vivian.”

  Sarah scanned the street to determine which way the sirens were coming from.

  “Come on Jack, we’re leaving,” she said as she pulled on Jack’s sleeve.

  “Where will you go?” Dolan asked.

  “Off the grid until my sister lets me in on what’s going on.”

  “Okay, be safe and call me if you need me.”

  Sarah bent over and motioned for Jack to do it too. They hustled across the street and into Sarah’s car. Dolan watched her do a U-turn and drive north as three cruisers came in from the south.

  It took ten minutes for the police to confirm all suspects were gone, except for the one shot by Officer Parkman. The perp had died on Dolan’s hallway runner, blood splatter only as high as the baseboard.

  Dolan was giving his meager statement to another officer when Parkman interrupted.

  “We found these on the dead guy. Any idea why?”

  Photos were thrust into Dolan’s hand. They were a little bigger than wallet size. Just big enough to carry in a breast pocket. Sarah was in the first shot. It was a bad picture of her taken about four to five years ago when she looked like a cancer patient with all the hair missing. The second shot was of him. Not a flattering one. It reminded him of a passport photo, also taken about five years ago when he used to do all those psychic fairs in various cities.

  It was the third, fourth and fifth photo he didn’t recognize.

  “Who are these three shots of?”

  “That one there,” Parkman moved closer and pointed, “is the dead girl Jack Tate found last night. The other two we’re still trying to identify. How do you think Jack is tied into all this? And if he is, how safe is Sarah right now? What I’d also like to know is why they ran after I told all three of you to wait in my cruiser.”

  “You know as well as I do that Sarah doesn’t trust cops.”

  “We may be her only friends right now. As it stands, we want to question her regarding the shooting earlier tonight in front of Jack’s house and we want to know how Jack is related to all this. There’s a reason people run from the police, Dolan. I may be a cop, but I’m also a friend whether she knows it or not.”

  “I can attest that Sarah isn’t running from you in the traditional sense. She knows what she’s doing. She’s tough.” He handed the pictures back as another plainclothes cop burst in his front door.

  “Thought you might want to know this.”

  Parkman turned towards him, reached up and pulled the toothpick out of his mouth. “What is it?”

  “I think we’ve got the connection to Jack Tate,” the cop said as he was flipping papers back and forth in his hands.

  “Come on, come on, what is it?” Parkman asked.

  “About twenty years ago the last case he worked was a cold case.”

  “So, how is that connected to this?” He tossed the mangled pick into Dolan’s kitchen sink.

  “A girl was raped and murdered. Jack was shot in the head, presumably by the murderer as he got close to him.”

  “Would I know this case?” Parkman asked.

  The cop looked up and nodded. “The murder victim was Vivian Roberts, Sarah’s sister.”

  Chapter 10

  Sarah drove two hours until they reached the next city. It didn’t look good to be running like this but she had no choice. She went to Dolan for help and drew the killers there. They were fortunate to get out alive. She needed to get a handle on what was going on without risking others.

  Jack slept quietly beside her. She kept the radio on low but heard nothing new about either of them on the news.

  On her right she saw a truck stop offering an all-you-can-eat breakfast. She pulled in, turned the car off and put her head back.

  ***

  She must have fallen asleep. The clock on the dash said she’d lost two hours. Jack sat outside on the hood of the Kia.

  The door opened with a squeak when she got out to stretch her legs.

  “Why didn’t you leave?” she asked.

  He looked over his shoulder at her. “Because I remember the connection. Ever since you told me your name it has been stuck in my head. Vivian Roberts was the last case I worked on before I got shot.”

  Instantly awake, Sarah walked around the car and stood in front of him.

  “So you are part of this. That means whoever shot you all those years ago is connected too, and they wanted to silence you as you were probably getting closer to them.”

  Jack nodded.

  A large truck eased past them on its way to the road. It lumbered by slowly but was so loud they stopped talking until it passed. Sarah turned to avoid the small amount of dust that floated by as the truck eased on.

  “You’re in more trouble than you think,” Jack said.

  “I know. But what about you? Those men were sent to kill you last night.”

  “Somehow, because of who you are or what you’re doing, they’ve decided that I need to be taken out. Whoever shot me twenty years ago wants to finish the job. I’d lost my memory, but now things have changed. People you know or people you’ve worked with before are in danger. Look what happened at Dolan’s house this morning.”

  Something wasn’t adding up. This didn’t make sense.

  Sarah turned away from Jack and stared at the highway. What sparked all the sudden interest? Why hadn’t Vivian given her more to work with? This wasn’t the norm. She liked when a message came through and then she acted on it and was done with it. But just like four years ago, whenever prophesies had something to do with family, the messages were more like riddles. It was left for her to figure it all out on her own. This was the only part of her ability as an Automatic Writer that she hated because it came with the potential for personal injury. If this ultimately led to her sister’s murderer she knew she would do whatever it took. A man like that couldn’t be allowed to remain free.

  “Let’s get some food and get back on the road,” Sarah said.

  Jack agreed. After they ate and used the facilities, they ordered two large coffees and left the truck stop, heading back into town.

  Sarah pulled out her cell phone and tried her parent’s number. She got no answer. If someone was after her and they went to Dolan’s, then they may try her parents next. Hopefully they were just out shopping.

  Next she tried Esmerelda. It was picked up on the first ring.

  “Hi Esmerelda, how are you? Is everything okay there?”

  “Hello Sarah. Everything seems fine. Is there something I should know?”

  She had to come right out and say it. Esmerelda wouldn’t have it any other way. She told her what happened last night and finished with Dolan’s place this morning.

  “I tried my parents but got no answer. I wanted you to be careful. I don’t know who these people are or what they’re capable of, but it appears they’re coming after people I know.”

  “We’re fine here. I’ll try to call your mom and dad too. If I can’t raise them I’ll head over to their place.”

  “Okay, thanks and I’ll call you as soon as I hear something. I’m on my way back into town.”

  She hung up and watched the road. What was her next move? The cops were looking for them because of the shooting at Jack’s place last night. Jack found a dead body and now he’s missing. Parkman saw them together earlier this morning at Dolan’s. She wasn’t a fugitive. She couldn’t see how being on the run from the cops would help her solve this problem. But she couldn’t see how being in custody would help either.

  That left Parkman. What was he doing at Dolan’s this morning anyway? She scrolled through the phone book on her cell and stopped at Parkman’s number. He’d called so often in the past she’d kept his number so she knew when not to answer.

  She squinted i
nto the sun and took a sip of her coffee.

  She hit send and waited.

  “Parkman here.”

  “It’s Sarah.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Out of town.”

  “Why are you calling me?” Parkman asked.

  “Because you’re the only cop I can trust and because you would know that I didn’t kill anybody last night at Jack Tate’s home.”